Inverness to Farsund

 

Inverness to Farsund

We left Seaport Marina in Inverness at 13 local time the 29.06 to be in the sealock at high tide.
When exiting we had the outgoing tide helping us out all the way untill past Lossiemouth.
We motored most of the way eastwards to Fraserborough. We got some wind from the S that helped us on our way.

Geir had radio contact on the VHF with his old work places. The Sleipner gas field and the Draupner gas riser platform. 

The wind died down 12 hours later and we motored in light rain, fog and mirrorlike seas for almost 24 hours.
The remaining 24 hours we got wind that allowed us to sail all the way to our home port in Farsund, where we arrived on July the 2nd.

Passing Loshavn

Loshavn (Pilots harbour) was a small village on the way into Farsund from the west. It has a good view towards the apoaching ships and the pilots kept watch in the small hut seen above the village.
 

Oban to Corpac/Caledonian Canal

From Oban to Inversness

 We departed Kerrera Marina first thing in the morning the 20.06 to sail up to Corpac,
the entry to the Caledonian Canal. Our aim was to have the tide with us all the way up and get into the sealock at high tide. It was a fantastic clear and lovely morning.

Lynn of Lorne (main land)

Motoring up the Lynn of Lorne on the inside of Lismore island and out to Loch Lynnhe past the island of Shuna was very nice. Passing the narrows at Corran we got some following wind
to help us the remaining 7 NM up to Corpac.

Current as tide was going in.

The light house at Corran point

Corran ferry

 

We were allowed into the sealock after 10 minutes waiting and motored up to a pontoon berth to rest up untill next morning.

The pontoon is at the start of the lock system that would take us up 36 meters through a system of  7 consecutive locks, bearing the name Neptunes staircase.

We were locked in the next morning as the only boat. They got a problem with swingbridges that had been closed while waiting for 3 more boats to join us. We ended up being the only boat going up that morning. 

Grete busy rope handling in the locks.

We found a berth at a pontoon at Banavie, located at the top of the locks.
We both felt like resting up 2-3 days there before moving on.
During our stay  we had an amatuer radio friend of Geir, Gaute, LA2BSA visiting us.
He was doing a trip of Scotland on his BMW motorcycle.

Gaute, LA2BSA (left) in my "shack"

The trip from Banavie took us to Fort Augustus, stopping for one night at Laggan and Cullocky locks.
We spent 2 nights on the pontoon on top of the locks in Fort Augustus.
Fort Augustus was as usual filled with tourists. We had Haggis and tatties at the Bothy Restaurant &Bar

Haggis, neeps and tatties

 We were locked down to Lock Ness in the morning of June 27th. We pushed on to reach the locks at Muirtown flight in Inverness - before closing time which was 1645 local time. We made it and was locked down to Seaport Marina. We filled up our diesel tank for the North Sea crossing 2 days later.

Bangor to Oban

Track fra Bangor to Oban

 

Bangor marina had new owners and the berth cost us 37 GBS a night. 2 years ago we paid 25 GBP,s.
We departed Bangor already the day after for a 23 hour voyage to Oban.

We left at 12 on the outgoing tide and enjoyed good wind from the south and the tide going from S to N.
We made very good progress with winds up to 25+ knots from the stern. The wind increased as we
passed the islands of Isla and Jura, but it was mostly from the west and the sea was quite calm.
When we sailed into The sound of Kerrera towards Oban the wind decreased a bit and enough to
allow us to negotiate a well filled marina at Kerrera where we had booked a berth online.

That berth was still occupied (we arrived early morning) so we found a vacant space.
Going in fast and with a quick reacting crew (Grete) to tie us up,
got us alongside between two other boats even if it was a tight fit.

Kerrera marina

Kerrera marina had new ownerssince we werethere in 2019. They were a a family from England and they had got the all the facilities done up and the restaurant was up and running.We had a very nice fish and shellfish meal. Very nice food and a great bottle of white wine.

The weather forecast for the coming days did not allow us to push on up the west coast as we had planned. We had to reach Norway by the 24.06 as we were attending our granddaughters wedding.

It was a very hard decission to make, but the weather and lack fysical strength didn't allow us to push on. So we decided to buy a license to sail through the Caledonia Canal up to Inverness. 

2 week license for the Caledonia Canal.

From Inverness it's 350 NM to our homeport in Farsund, Norway.

Bantry Bay to Bangor, Northern Ireland

Route from Bantry Bay to Bangor

We left Lawrence Cove on Sunday the 12th June bound for Bangor in Northern Ireland.
The first day was fine with winds from WSW giving s good speed along the south coast.
We passed many placed we would have liked to visit, but we still had hopes reaching Norway
the June the 24th, so we pushed on. 

Passing north of Fastnet Rock

 

Rounding the SE of Ireland wind died and the current
was against us. We learned that picking the right route and time is vital. We struggeled very hard
to gain speed outside Roslaire in rather shallow water, where the tide ran fast and we had a COG of less that 1 knot.
We may have had less going furter out. But when the tide turned we were blessed with water running north again and we saw 7-8 knots of COG at times. On the last few miles we also had the tide with us giving us a COG of 9-10 knots. We arrived Bangor marina the 15.06.

Aproaching Bangor

 

Horta to Ireland

 

Route from Horta to SW Ireland

We departed from Horta 21st of May. The first 2 days was forecasted to be light to no wind.
We motored to the NW to join a wind system that would come from SW and give us a good push northwards between 10-20 knots. It slowly veered to S, the SE and then E, sometimes ENE and increasing to 25 knots. We tried to keep our course towards SW Ireland, but the wind pushed us towards the west.  

In the morning of 31st of May we were at the latitude abreast SW Ireland, the wind eased off
and we started the engine to motor due east. We had spent quite a lot of diesel already and we had to motor very economically not to run out. We were then 350NM west of Bantry Bay.

We set our sight for Lawrence Cove marina on the island of Bere.
We sent them an email requesting berth and diesel and was granted both.

After 12 hours motoring we finally started to get some wind from the NE which slowly turned N the NW and increased. We could turn of the engine and sailed all the way into Bantry Bay. 

Sailing into Bantry Bay in a pretty sunset.

 

Another one

We arrived in pitch dark at 2AM the 4th of June and we moored at a visitors mooring just outside the marina. The approach to the marina is narrow and shallow and we sailed in the following morning.

Ocean Viking alongside in Lawrence Cove marina.

Bere island is a small community with 200 inhabitans. There was a small shop/cafe and a PUB/Bar with very limited opening times.
We also used the time there to visit the nearest town, Castletown-Bere which was on the mainland 30 minutes by the ferry. The town is the busiest fishery port in Ireland and there were lots of Irish, Spanish, French boats in the port. We spent the night there at a small B&B and enjoyed a good night out.
Next day we did some shopping for our coming voyage up to Scotland. We were horrified for the prices of foods. The economy has certainly gone bad as the result of the war in Ukraine.

Ponta Delgada to Horta

Ponta Delgada to Horta, 155 NM

The time finally came to set off for our next destination, Horta on the island of Faial. Horta is 155 nm west of Punta Delgada, about 31 hours sail. The weather had been quite windy from the south for days and waves/swell pretty heavy when we departed. Luckily there was a little wind from the SSW, enough to steady up the boat with our mainsail up. We motorsailed untill we reached the entrance to the Sao Jorge channel - the stretch of water between the islands of Sao Jorge and Pico. We motored all the way into Horta arriving there just after 7PM.

Alongside in Horta, checking in.

Checked in at the marina and they gave us a berth at the pontoons. Our plan is to stay here approximately 2 weeks. The next day we just had to go visit Peters Cafe Sport, which is a legendary waterhole amongst the sailing community. 

 

Here we met Duarte, who we knew from our last visit in Horta. He and his friend used to bring us water and groceries and sometimes take-away - when we were anchored here in 2020. At the time we were not allowed ashore because of COVID-19. Duarte remebered us/boat.. he said: Oh yes you who bought all that water ! Hehe... he was right, we bouth 15 x 8 liters of drinking water. That water lasted us long into our second trip. I think we emptied the last container in January this year. 

We hired a car and went on a day trip to see the island.  A great day with lots to be seen.

  We also finally met up with our friend Lars Hedman who arrived with his boat from the Carribean. We tried to meet him in November in Las Palmas, but we got there too late, as Geir was down with a bad cold, we later think it could have been Covid. As there were no space in the marina, they were told to anchor on arrival. Lasse had no dinghy and Geir went over and picked up Lasse and took him ashore for his check-in. They were glad to having arrived as the past few days had been very rough. We shared a few beers and compared notes. It was very nice to finally meet Lasse again. 

 A couple of days later we were invited by Lasse for a dinner at the Atletico restaurant and enjoyed a great meal with Lasse and his crew. They were leaving the next morning for Lagos in Portugal and we for Ireland. We hope to meet him again somewhere :)

Azores. Visiting Santa Maria, Sao Miguel

From Madeira to Santa Maria

Our trip from Calheta/Madeira to Santa Maria was rather uneventfull. We had some good sailing winds the first 24 hours. The wind slacked off for the next 48 hours and we motored to keep up speed. The last day the wind picked up and we had a great sail into the harbour in the town of Vila do Porto located on the SW side of the island. We were called by a french boat who needed assistance as their engine wouldn't start. We managed to get help via the bar in the Sailclub and they were towed in the last few 100 meters. We had some cold beers at the sailclub later on an thanked them for helping. 

Sail Club at Vila Do Porto

 

There was a great car rental on the island. We hired a nice Citroen C3 for one day paying just 27 Euro all inclusive (minus petrol). 

Our rental car.

 We had a great trip around the island. The island is very green and there were many pictoresque small vallies and comunities with old houses/farmhouses. Many of them abandoned, years ago. 

 

Overlooking the harbour/marina was a small fort dating back a few hundred years. The island had been attacked by pirates multiple times since they were populated and the locals had endured a lot of misery. 

The old fort overlooking the marina

  Today it is a very modern community. Modern shops, roads narrow but in good order and they also have a great airport with dayli flights to the other islands in the Azores. They also have flight to Lisboa. 

 of

 

Lighthouse in the southeast of Santa Maria

 After 4 days - it was time to push on to our next destination - Ponta Delgada on the island of Sao Miguel. We left first thing in the morning accompanied by 3 other boats. 2 French and one German. The voyage was just 55 nm and we arrived just before 7PM the same day. We moored in what they still call the new marina. (built 13 years ago). The marina is at the city center. But it is quite open to winds and sea/swell from the south. We had a few very rough days where the boat really bounced around in the berth. We also used the oprtunity to take a couple of days of luxury, threating ourselves to 2 nights at a hotel. We always try to get a room with a bath tub. Grete find a soothing warm bath heavenly for her troubled back. We were recommended a good local restaurant by some Norwegians we met in the marina. Not a big succsess. The sacond nite we went to a better one next to our hotel and had a 3 couse meal. Very nice. We wanted to visit a botanic garden we found on GoogleMaps. When we entered we were briskly stopped by a plain security guard who informed us you needed a permit to enter and we were given a map of where we could go. We had to strictly follow the track on the map. Turns out this was a garden surrounding the presidency of the Azores - and not the botanic garden we had ment to visit. So much for using GoogleMaps ;) 

 While in Ponta Delgada Geir received a Distress call on the shortwave radio. It came from a Hong Kong registred bulk carrier and who had lost a man overboard. It turned out they had sent  the wrong position in their call. They had written 88 degrees EAST - which we found was inland in Bangla Desh.

This was the distress call.

Here is the vessel.

 Checking the vesseles MMSI number showed the correct position to be 100 miles south of New Orleans. We phoned the US Coastguard who again phoned the vessel by satphone. They confirmed the distress situation. We later learned the man had been found by coastguard helicopter and rescued.